Expressionism

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EXPRESSIONISM.

DIE BRÜCKE
DER BLAUE REITER
EMERGENCE OF AN AVANT-GARDE
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Expressionism at the beginning of the twentieth century was a central and eastern European movement that brought together painters, sculptors, writers (of literature and for the theater), art critics, architects, filmmakers, engravers, and musicians. More specifically, in 1912 the magazine Der Sturm used the term expressionism to characterize the art scene of the day in contrast to impressionism. Paul Fechter, in his book Der Expressionismus, published in Munich in 1914, was the first critic to use the word expressionism to refer to a trend in German art. For Fechter, expressionism had come to embody the spirit of the times—a spirit that, in the realm of the arts in Germany, took the form of a fight against governmental authority; a rupture defined by the formation of "secessions" or "new secessions" of groups of artists independent of the official culture of William II (r. 1888–1918). In 1897 the Vienna Secession had freed artists from academic painting, proclaiming a more individual art and thus paving the way for the Berlin Secession the following year. Until 1913 the Berlin New Secession helped open up access to European, and especially French, art (the exhibition of impressionist paintings in Berlin museums was forbidden by the government). These new approaches were immediately disseminated through the reviews. The founding in 1910 of the Berlin magazine Der Sturm by Herwarth Walden (pseudonym of Georg Lewin, 1878–1941) and the subsequent founding of Die Aktion provided a way to convey the new ideas, reflecting the desire for liberty and freedom from institutional constraints—the basic elements of the avant-garde in Europe.

DIE BRÜCKE

The rejection of academic art and teaching allowed four students at the Technische Hochschule (Technical School) in Dresden—Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), Fritz Bleyl (1880–1966), Erich Heckel (1883–1970), and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976)—to form an association in 1905. Schmidt-Rottluff proposed to call it "Die Brücke" (The bridge); the choice of this name was made explicit by a woodcut made the same year representing Dresden's Augustus Bridge, which links the old town to the new town. Other group members were Max Pechstein (1881–1955) and (briefly) Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Subject matter linked to their environments—such as lake scenes from the Bavarian landscape, in which nude figures are merged with nature (Otto Muller), or nostalgia for the landscapes of northern Germany (Nolde)—contrasted with the context of urban development and rapid industrialization that inspired the futurists. With the exception of Pechstein, the artists of Die Brücke were not academically trained and were thus unencumbered by doctrine. They painted twisted, angular shapes with violent contrasts and pure colors outlined in black: yellow faces, red trees, or blue streets, inspired by The Scream (1893, considered the first "expressionist drama") by Edvard Munch (1863–1944) or the violent colors of Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890). Taking their inspiration from non-European sculpture, the artists produced series of sculpted and painted nudes (from 1910 to 1914) with exaggerated thighs and breasts, their curves accentuated with black paint, that show a return to a primitivism recalling that of Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). Until 1913 the artists of Die Brücke also reinvigorated the graphic arts through their recurrent use of the technique of woodcut engravings.

DER BLAUE REITER

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) and Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941), Russian painters who had emigrated to Germany, settled in Murnau (south of Munich), near Lake Staffel, in 1908. Kandinsky's concrete references in his work were becoming increasingly enigmatic: his gestures were expressive, his palette essentially freed from the real appearance of objects.

In January 1909 Kandinsky and Jawlensky founded the Neue Künstler-Vereinigung München (New association of Munich artists, NKVM). This heterogeneous group, whose members had varying objectives, organized its first exhibition in December 1909 at Heinrich Thannhäuser's Moderne Galerie (the second exhibition was in September 1910). The painter Franz Marc (1880–1916), who met Kandinsky for the first time in 1911, explained that "This bold enterprise, which consists in sublimating the 'matter' that impressionism clings to, is a necessary reaction that began at Pont-Aven with Gauguin.…What seems to us so promising in these new experiments by the Association of Artists is that fact that these works … provide valuable examples of the manipulation of space, rhythm, and chromatic theory" (quoted in Figures du moderne, p. 199; translated from the French).

In 1911 Kandinsky resigned as president of the association because one of his Compositions was rejected during preparation for the next exhibition. Immediately, Marc and Kandinsky founded the group Der Blaue Reiter (The blue rider) and organized an alternative exhibit to coincide with the third NKVM show. Fifteen artists with varying artistic visions, including musicians such as Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), presented their works. Kandinsky and Marc used terminology that they hoped to use in their publishing projects; those projects culminated in the publication in May 1912 of the Almanach Der Blaue Reiter. This rich and eclectic publication combined avant-garde works with examples of Egyptian and Far Eastern art, folk art, children's drawings, and paintings by amateurs. That same year Paul Klee (1879–1940) joined the second Blaue Reiter exhibit, while Kandinsky's work began to combine figurative elements (such as knights and trees) and nonfigurative elements and to dissociate color from line through the use of watercolor. He published Concerning the Spiritual in Art, developed the concept of "internal necessity," and laid the first foundations for abstraction. Kandinsky left Germany in 1914.

EMERGENCE OF AN AVANT-GARDE

In this context of their hatred of social conventions and the struggle against traditional values and authority, some German artists saw in the war of 1914 the potential to destroy the old order and build a better society. Kirchner, August Macke (1887–1914), and Marc voluntarily enlisted. Marc (whose Letters from the Front provides valuable testimony), Macke, and Wilhelm Morgner (1891–1917) died in combat. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, in the context of the payment of war reparations owed to France and severe unemployment, the young Weimar Republic, its government dominated by the Social Democrats, awarded positions of responsibility in teaching as well as honorific titles: Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff, and Kirchner were elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts. Most of the Blaue Reiter artists fled Germany. After the rise of Nazism, the works of German expressionist artists were deemed "degenerate"; they were "displayed" in 1938 at the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate art) exhibit.

Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter were two complementary groups that contributed to the establishment of the avant-garde in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century.

See alsoAvant-Garde; Kandinsky, Wassily; Klee, Paul; Modernism.